Speedkill

Court TV has a show called Psychic Detectives that I think has become fairly popular. I just watched an episode entitled Mystery on the Beach. I’m really not impressed.

The psychic didn’t actually help them at all. The crime was solved after the suspect confessed while he was in prison on a burglary charge. The show strongly hits that the psychic sent “psychic waves” and made him confess, but a normal confession is a fine explanation (Occam’s Razor and all).

I didn’t see the entire show, but at the beginning the psychic was given a picture and according to the show, he started reeling off details about the case. This sounds like a cold reading session, where the psychic fishes for information and the willing participants confirm his vague assertions (despite claims that he wasn’t asking them questions, but stating facts). There’s also the possibility he could have researched the case beforehand, had he been given any information before helping the police. The show is sort of vague there, it seems. Then, he heads to the crime scene. This is the part I missed, but he made two predictions that I heard: the killer used a “wooden handled knife” and that he threw it under a boat. He also said he felt something strange about the house, near the crime scene, that the killer lived in. Interestingly, he claims something a little different on CNN:

And it was the person that I had indicated that was living in the house that I had indicated.

At least according to the show, he didn’t actually indicate that the house was where the killer lived. He got a bad feeling about it. I don’t know about him indicating the person, there wasn’t anything about that in the show that I saw. It wasn’t brought up as something that the confession confirmed. In fact, the police seemed to be looking at his brother, who also lived in the house. I’m a little sketchy on the boat and house predictions. I don’t think he said anything about a boat until he saw the house at the crime scene, but I’m not sure.

The only interesting detail on the knife part is the wooden handle (he would have known the victim was killed by a knife beforehand). We never actually see that confirmed. They flash a part of the killer’s confession that says “I got a knife.” As for the boat, that’s at least possible. Boats aren’t exactly uncommon in Florida, especially around beaches. I’m also not sure what exactly he said regarding the boat and the knife. There’s definitely the possibility of a vague prediction and the officers filling in the details.

I can’t find any information on this outside of what I remember from the show and like I said I missed some of it. I don’t find it particularly surprising that the psychic appears to have been no help at all.